Star Trek IV: Changes in the World since 1986

1) Cold war tension between US and Russia.
2) People still relying mostly on newspapers for their info.
3) Few people with mobile communicators.
4) Society was "still using money."
5) Cranial surgery was shockingly crude.

Now, 26+ years later.

1) USSR is gone.
2) More and more papers and newsmagazines going online. I think Newsweek was the latest.
3) Smart phones everywhere.
4) Timebanks, which don't use money, are popular globally.
5) MRI scans are now standard practice. And a 3D printer was used a year ago to make an artificial jaw for an elderly woman.

If they emerged from time travel in say.... 2006, their communicators wouldn't really seem all that out of place with all the cellphones out there. If they were in our current time, the iPads and tablets out there would seem of higher tech than some of the things we saw on TOS, and more on par with TNG tech.

In another decade or so, we can expect the Federal Employment Act to be repealed and the homeless and unemployed to be relocated to Sanctuary Districts. "It's the only way to keep those... people... off the streets."

^ Good thing it wasn't...because if that really had happened the Moon would have crashed INTO Earth and destroyed us

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All we know is that the waste dumps were on "farside" (incorrectly called "Dark Side" in the opening scene). If just over the limb on the correct side, the Moon might have taken off on a tangent. Dead center on farside and the Moon might have dove inward, grazing Earth. Just over the limb on the other side, well, the Moon might have spiraled in and crashed into Earth. But then the show would have ended right there.

^ In any case, I would think that the loss of the Moon would do to Earth exactly what a later episode of S1999 said it did: destroy it via climate alteration (i.e. the loss of tidal forces generated by the Moon's presence).

If they emerged from time travel in say.... 2006, their communicators wouldn't really seem all that out of place with all the cellphones out there. If they were in our current time, the iPads and tablets out there would seem of higher tech than some of the things we saw on TOS, and more on par with TNG tech.

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Ha, so true. Our gadgets and technology would have probably looked FAR flashier and more advanced than anything Kirk's crew was using in that movie.

I have a friend who is younger than me and was born in 1986. I got him to watch The Voyage Home recently and he said he absolutely loved it. Said it was a wonderful film. Apparently, if anything about it seemed dated, it didn't affect his enjoyment at all!